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Reflecting on the year that has just passed is a time-honored tradition. And for those of us involved in smart cities that reflection provides an opportunity to evaluate the events and trends that could influence the decisions we make as we move...

As cities develop and populations continue to grow, there is one common challenge most places face: transportation. In southwest Germany near the French border, Karlsruhe, the second-largest city in the state of Baden-Württemberg, has had a three-...

While rental housing costs are rising in many cities and affordable housing is scarce, renters are still becoming increasingly inclined to favor sustainable design and green features in the homes they choose — to the point that they now take those...

Urban environments are becoming more crowded, and high-density developments are being planned and built to house all those new citizens. But how do we ensure we're building healthy, livable environments? The story below describes a collaborative...

A word of thanks to the Economic Roundtable (based in LA) for their work on developing data driven tools to reduce homelessness. Last year it was the Silicon Valley Triage Tool, this year an extensive report providing insights into how to...

I would guess one of the most daunting challenges city leaders and human services providers have on their plates today is how to help the homeless in their communities and at the same time protect public health and safety. In the case of homeless...

In China, rescue stations that take in the homeless and mentally ill people tend to be run by the government. Some have policies that after 10 days of free accommodations and food, they are issued a ticket to return to their home towns. As you'll...

Mobility has several connotations. But it’s exciting to see an innovative company best known for manufacturing automobiles taking a broad view of what the term can mean. You’d expect Toyota to focus on physical mobility – how people get from point A...

You hear a variety of reasons why so many young people today are living on the streets, in a car, on someone’s couch or in youth shelters. And it can be a challenging population to help as the number of homeless youth continues to increase in many...

The headline on a recent editorial in the Seattle Times says it all: "Focus on data, not good intentions, to combat homelessness." As it has for the past five years, Seattle's point-in-time count of the homeless climbed this year. Given that "by...

'Innovating to include' is the message we think resonates best with the effort to lift up vulnerable populations in communities around the world. Often we're talking about technology, but as you'll read below, innovation comes in many forms. –...

"Poor housing linked to rising asthma cases in Europe," reads a recent EURACTIV headline. Damp and moldy buildings, bad heating, poor insulation are all suspect. In fact in Bulgaria, the article suggests 46.5% of the population is unable to keep...

Policies that force developers to incorporate affordable housing into new projects in exchange for incentives aren't new. But as the affordable housing crisis heats up, more cities are looking at inclusionary zoning as a partial solution. Katy...

Left to right: Philip Bane, Karen Addato, Rose Broome, Daniel Flaming, Halil Toros, Ky LeLike San Francisco to the north, Silicon Valley has a homeless problem that can't be ignored. It’s estimated more than 6,500 people are homeless in Santa Clara...

I'm sure most of us walk by homeless people on the streets or drive by their encampments and wonder how they got there – and what it would take to get them into a better place. Andrew Funk, an American entrepreneur living in Barcelona, not only...

There's lots of wind in Berwickshire, a historic Scottish county that borders the North Sea. There's also some innovating thinking blowing through too. Case in point: The local housing charity partnered with a renewable energy charity to harness...

If affordable housing is a huge problem today – and most would agree it is – how are we going to accommodate the additional 106 million low-income households that McKinsey Global Institute anticipates there will be by 2025? As you'll read below, a...

We continue our Quick Takes series with a look at some intriguing initiatives communities are undertaking to bolster their affordable housing stock and/or make existing housing more affordable. What’s notable in some of these examples is that they...

Power for All is an advocacy organization working to achieve universal access to sustainable, cost-effective energy in the next decade. But they aren't advocating the traditional approach, which is to extend the centralized electric grid. Rather,...

Meeting the needs of homeless populations isn't a straightforward proposition; individually their needs may be many or varied on any particular day. But as you'll read below in the first installment of a new "Quick takes" series we're launching,...